# Nicholas Humphrey **Entity class:** Psychologist and consciousness theorist **Collections:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]] · [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]] **Canonical source article:** [[articles/Host-Indexed Autonomy|Host-Indexed Autonomy]] ## Definition **Nicholas Humphrey** is a psychologist and consciousness theorist whose work places subjective experience in an evolutionary and biological context. ## Relationships - **Advisor to:** [[wiki/PRISM (Partnership for Research Into Sentient Machines)|PRISM]]. - **Institutional affiliation:** [[wiki/London School of Economics|London School of Economics]]. - **Research routes:** [[wiki/Consciousness|consciousness]], [[wiki/Sentience|sentience]], and evolutionary accounts of subjective experience. - **Collection and source routes:** [[collections/Consciousness Continuity|Consciousness Continuity]], [[collections/Neurotech|Neurotech]], and [[articles/Host-Indexed Autonomy|Host-Indexed Autonomy]]. - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “Every human being is endowed with the mental programs for developing a "conscious self" or "soul": a soul which not only values its own survival but sees itself as very much an end in its own right (in fact a soul which, in a fit of solipsism, may even consider itself the one and only source of all the ends there are!). Such a soul, besides doing all it can to ensure its own basic comfort and security, will typically strive for self-development: through learning, creativity, spiritual growth, symbolic expression, consciousness-raising, and so on. These activities redound to the advantage of mind and body. The result is that such "selfish souls" do indeed make wonderful agents for "selfish genes".” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2002, Edge Annual Question, “What Is Your Question? ... Why?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Natural Selection Built a Conscious Self That Treats Itself as an End by Nicholas Humphrey|Natural Selection Built a Conscious Self That Treats Itself as an End by Nicholas Humphrey]] > “I believe that human consciousness is a conjuring trick, designed to fool us into thinking we are in the presence of an inexplicable mystery.” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2005, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE IS TRUE EVEN THOUGH YOU CANNOT PROVE IT?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/Consciousness May Be a Conjuring Trick by Nicholas Humphrey|Consciousness May Be a Conjuring Trick by Nicholas Humphrey]] > “In my own research on consciousness, I have changed my mind more than once. I expect it will happen again. But it has not — at least so far — been because I learned any new facts. Contrary to the hopes of neuroscientists on one side, quantum physicists on the other, I'm pretty sure all the facts that we need to solve the hard problem are already familiar to us — if only we could see them for what they are. No magic bullet is going to emerge from the lab, from brain imaging or particle accelerators. Instead, what we are waiting for is merely (!) a revolutionary new way of thinking about things that we all, as conscious creatures, already know — perhaps a way of making those same facts unfamiliar.” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2008, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?”* [[reminders/Consciousness/The Hard Problem May Require a New Way of Thinking Rather Than New Facts by Nicholas Humphrey|The Hard Problem May Require a New Way of Thinking Rather Than New Facts by Nicholas Humphrey]] > “What really matters to cognitive performance is not so much the brain's hardware as its onboard software.” > **— Nicholas Humphrey**, *2014 Edge Annual Question, response passage* [[reminders/Human Animality/Brain Programming Matters More Than Brain Hardware for Cognition by Nicholas Humphrey|Brain Programming Matters More Than Brain Hardware for Cognition by Nicholas Humphrey]] ## Sources - [PRISM — team and advisors](https://www.prism-global.com/)